"Microsoft is steering customers toward software rentals, the idea of paying an
annual subscription fee. When that system is the standard, will there be a version
of the software that -- as is standard today -- allows customers to buy once and
keep using the product indefinitely even if they decide to jump off the upgrade
merry-go-round? Don't bet on it."

"It's hard to have a righteous opinion on the environment when you're as selfish
and uninformed as I am. On one hand, I'm a cat-loving vegetarian who ought to
care deeply about the caribou or koala bears or bats or whatever they have in
Alaska. On the other hand, I live in California so I'd be willing to squeeze
schoolchildren to death if I thought some oil would come out."

"... nuns who chronicled positive emotions in their twenties have lived markedly
longer than those who recounted emotionally neutral personal histories, a new
study finds. This result, which derives from a study group with unprecedented
similarity in lifestyle and social status, supports earlier evidence that
expressing happiness, interest, love, and other positive feelings enhances
physical health...."

"In this and almost every other case I encountered in OS X, the lack of
functionality in beta software was offset by the fact that I could use it and
remain in the wonderland that is Aqua. Yes, looks do matter -- to me, at least.
If they didn't, I might just use Windows 2000 -- it's quite stable, and runs a
lot more software than OS X. Problem is there's nothing even slightly alluring
about Windows 2000. Not even a little."

> Now *that's* the kind of argument that I find persuasive.

> But I'm still going to wait until Mac OS 10.1 is out before I even try it.

> Her real name is Julie (and she never had leukemia). According to this message, the hoax was perpetrated by a family
friend who gained access to photos of Julie under false pretense, and used
them as props for a fictional web drama.

The rumor that the Kaycee Nicole photos were "pilfered from a family home page"
freaked me out a little. My
access logs show that about 10 visitors a week find this site through search
engine inquiries like "pictures of children playing." I am absolutely certain
that these are sweet people who just want to see pictures of happy children --
but I can understand why a lot of people get paranoid about posting pictures
of their kids.

"Most chemical processes yield left- and right-handed amino acids in equal
amounts yet life forms contain left-handed amino acids almost exclusively....
Researchers in Washington, D.C., now report that calcium carbonate, or calcite,
can adsorb an excess of left-handed amino acids onto some of its crystal faces
and of right-handed amino acids on other faces." ...

"[Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution of Washington speculates] the left-handed
amino acids in one place got the edge ... because by pure chance, these lefties
bonded into peptides capable of self-replication."

I'm no evolutionary biologist, but that sounds pretty iffy to me.

There's an interesting similarity between this problem and the matter-antimatter
imbalance in cosmology: as far as we can tell, all the matter in the universe is
composed of plain old protons and electrons, so the early universe produced more
of those than antiprotons and positrons. Why?

"In binary star systems composed of a conventional star and a black hole, vast
oceans of gas and matter from the star can swirl into the flattened accretion
disk." ...

"`The Chandra data indicate that this accretion disk gets no closer to the
event horizon than about 600 miles, a far cry from the 25 miles that some had
expected,' said Chandra astronomer Jeffrey McClintock...."

"I wasn't aware that I was giving the impression that Margret is something of a
trial to live with. I'm here merely stating the facts, without bias or
embellishment; a simple camera pointed at the scene, recording it with complete
neutrality. I am, frankly, shocked and disturbed that anyone might think I'm
here to make the case that my girlfriend is, say, as mad as an eel."

"A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended Friday that the popular
allergy drugs Claritin, Allegra and Zyrtec be made available without prescription."

> I've got allergies, and I'll be stocking up on all three as soon as they hit
the shelves.

> The NYT says just because the FDA allows a drug company to sell a drug OTC,
that doesn't mean they have to.

I link to subscription-only sites like WSJ pretty frequently. If you want to
read more, but you don't want to pay for it, you might be able to find another
article on the same subject at Yahoo. The Yahoo headlines page carries articles from from Reuters
and AP, and the search engine is pretty good.

"Since the incident, the Ross family has been further
victimized by vandalism and racial slurs. Four weeks ago they
put their home up for sale.... Someone tore down and
destroyed their Christmas lights, their house has been egged and
someone shouted racial slurs at the children as they played in
their front yard...."

> I've never stopped in Katy, but I always thought it was upper middle
class. This sounds more like one of those stories I used to always hear about
Vidor.

You know, the political and economic climate has been sort of weird since Dubya
took over. I keep getting this feeling that seems like a cross between vertigo
and déjà vu, mixed in with a lot of seventies flashbacks. It's
not pleasant.

Oh God, what a nightmare! My site host switched over from MailBank to NetIdentity
this evening, and knocked me off-line during the switchover. But it was worse
than that. Instead of just getting a "page not found" message, anyone who tried
to get to my site got a full-page picture of some red-headed tart blowing a
bubble-gum bubble!

How embarrassing!

2002.07.26: It has been over a year since the switch to NetIdentity,
so I thought I should mention that I've been very happy with their service.

"Researchers believe the data also support the idea that ordinary
matter, of which planets, stars and even people are made, accounts
for only about 4.5 percent of the universe's total mass. The rest
of the energy in the universe is attributed to cold dark matter,
which cannot be easily detected, and to a force called `dark
energy,' which is thought to be causing galaxies to separate at a
faster and faster rate."

"By one estimate, the average neutrino could travel for
1,000 light-years through solid matter before being stopped." ...

"From what we understand
about how the Sun produces neutrinos, 60 billion solar neutrinos should
pass through every square centimetre of the Earth's surface every second.
But measurements from neutrino detectors suggest that only between a
half and a third of this figure are reaching the Earth."

> When they talk about billions passing through every square "centimetre"
every second, that means you!